Fast Food and Testosterone: New Study Claims it’s Not Only the Frying Oil that Sucks

Everyone knows deep down inside that processed fast food isn’t a healthy choice. But still from time to time we can find ourselves at McDonalds drive thru window 4am wondering whether 2 Big Mac’s and a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese will satisfy the wildest junk food cravings known to man.

Even though its universally known that the extra order of fries and a large soda with that savory burger might just not be the best choices when it comes to food, we often also don’t really know why exactly would they be deemed unhealthy. It’s just that it kind of is, unhealthy and stuff. You’ll hear explanations such as “high amount of calories”, “artery clogging fat load”, and “processed to death” thrown around.

More importantly – and as this is a Men’s health website – what does fast food do to our hormonal health? What exactly do these “junk foods” do to our testosterone levels?

Fast Food Health Effects

Generally speaking, fast food or “junk food” is anything you can get at places such as: McDonalds, Burger King, Taco bell, Little Caesars, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, KFC, and so forth…

…You know, the places that sell ridiculously cheap, heavily processed, and often deep fried foods that are – in most cases – extremely tasty and somewhat addictive. Trigger-foods as some say.

Easy, tasty, and affordable, hence the popularity

The big problem most people have with fast foods is their high calorie content and the weird perception that fast food makes you fat or could “stick” into different parts of the body more effectively than say, a good home-cooked meal would. While it’s true that many fast food chains sell meals that are extremely high in calories – and consuming more calories than you burn will make you gain weight – one can’t assume that a Big Mac would be more fattening than something home-cooked with the same amount of calories in it.

It’s also absurd to think that the body would store junk food calories in any other way that it stores calories from salad or Grandma’s good ol’ meat loaf. Simply put, your body stores overeaten calories as fat on different parts of the body based on your gender, genetics, and hormonal profile, NOT giving a single thought about WHERE those calories actually came from. With this in mind, yes it’s easy to overeat on high-calorie junk foods, but if you eat them and are still on a caloric maintenance or deficit, you ain’t going to store any of it as fat.

Your body stores junk food calories exactly the same way as it would do to “clean food” calories. As long as the caloric intake is kept the same, clean foods are just as fattening as fast foods.

Guess what type of fats does the fast food industry prefer? That’s right, the cheapest possible vegetable oils, the ones that are high in PUFA and trans fatty-acids, also high in inflammatory omega-6 with little to no anti-inflammatory omega-3’s. These include soybean oil, cottonseed oil, sunflower seed oil, rapeseed oil, and the like. Why? McDonald’s sells over 6 million burgers every day, they WILL use the cheapest possible oil they can get away with. And unfortunately the cheapest oils are the processed vegetable oils, the high PUFA kind.

Unfortunately the type of fat generally used in fast food restaurants is the worst possible type for testosterone production and your overall health.

The heavy processing of cheap fast food ingredients leads to accumulation of testosterone reducing chemicals in the end-product.

Conclusion

Although the first bite of your favorite fast food might be one of the most pleasurable experiences (especially at 4am after a night of slamming alcohol), one should be aware of the possible testosterone lowering side-effects that come with increased intake of processed junk food.

To put it simply, the low quality frying oils combined with accumulated phthlates and very low amount of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), make most fast foods a horrible choice for overall and hormonal health of all men.

They might also make you fat. And by this I mean that it’s far easier to over consume fast food calories than what it would be from nutritious foods with plenty of vitamins and minerals.

The term “empty calories” perfectly describes the menu of most fast food joints.

Great website! But I got a question and I hope you don’t mind that it’s about a different topic. I don’t participate in crossfit, or any short endurance type training. But I’ve read in many articles that short training of the such, 10 min circuit training, short lactate threshold training, burst training, density training, have actually been show to increase testosterone, due to very high intensities, and inadequate time for cortisol to rise. Given the fact, you have proper diet and recovery. But then I’ve also read an article, in which it states that the long term effects of endurance type training i.e. bodybuilder, actually lowers baseline testosterone, due to exercise induced hypogonadism. The same has been report to be true in long duration endurance athletes. And in this case, Olympic sprinters. When elite athletes performed a 45sec sprint their testosterone levels actually were reported to decrease, as when compared to beginner athletes, who seem to benefit from a rather large increase. The article stated that this was because of the exercise induced hypogonadism. Now hopefully you’re able to answer this, but do you know/ or think that performing short burst training, short density training, short lactate threshold training would cause hypogonadism, even if it’s under ten minutes? And if so, what if extra proper recovery is taken, ( which includes de-load weeks, proper rest, extra carbs consumption, etc.)?